Like a lot of you, this week I received several messages telling me my e-mail address had been stolen from a company called Epsilon that provides mass e-mail services to many giant corporations. At the end of this post you’ll find what I believe is the latest list of companies affected. I have heard from four of these companies so far — Best Buy, Chase, Hilton, and Ritz-Carlton, which is interesting because I don’t recall having even stayed at a Ritz-Carlton. From a look at the master list below I’m surprised I haven’t yet heard from Verizon, where I am also a customer. The point of this post isn’t just to print a list of […]
The Epsilon Syndrome
Geeks like me: What's Engadget really worth?
Thorstein Veblen was a cranky Norwegian-American economist best known for his 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class where he coined the term conspicuous consumption, which meant that if former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski bought a $9000 shower curtain with company money he should probably go to prison… and did. Veblen instantly came to mind this morning when I read about how nine of the top editors were leaving Engadget for a new gig no longer associated with AOL. There’s a lot to think about in this move, which Veblen (who died in Palo Alto in 1929) would have appreciated.
Veblen, you see, was a socialist of sorts but really he was more a dour Norwegian who respected hard work and the accumulation of […]
I told you so
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is out with his autobiography and Vanity Fair has an excerpt available online. As the Nth richest man in the world, Allen isn’t doing this for the money. Maybe it’s for posterity. Maybe to settle old grudges, and he certainly does that in Vanity Fair.
The part of that excerpt everyone will be talking about this week is Allen’s story of overhearing Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer plotting to recover Allen’s Microsoft shares or dilute him into insignificance, this at a time with Allen was dying of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. It’s a great story, that’s for sure. But if you are a longtime follower of this column or its predecessor you’ve […]
Plutonium is forever
I have been doing business in Japan for 20 years, consulting for big and small companies, speaking at conferences, writing for Japanese publications, and helping both American and Japanese companies do business with each other. For years I flew to Tokyo once a month, generally in my role as giver of bad news, which I could get away with as an American. Throughout those 20 years I have been astounded by the energy and discipline of Japanese industry, and by its turgid impenetrability. For a country known for advanced technology, Japan is astoundingly resistant to outside ideas, as the current earthquake and nuclear crisis show yet again.
You’d think they’d want our help, and they do […]
Shoe death
This is my son Fallon’s shoe, a Skecher’s Hot Lights Chopper, U.S. size 12. The toe, filled with LED lights, is glowing in the picture. It has been blinking at me from across the room all evening now. It reminds me of the heart of a shark I once saw beating on a dock in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, hours after it had been cut from the fish. Unlike that shark, Fallon’s shoe isn’t dead, but it is getting close, the flashes coming further and further apart.
Light-up shoes are a fact of life for American parents. Fallon, who is four, is in the golden age of light-up shoes and he loves them. But I gave little […]
